Crossroads: The future of university education in Western Australia

Abstract

Murdoch University is twenty-five years old, and Walter Murdoch has been dead for thirty years. This year 2000 has also seen the deaths of two fine citizens, his wife Barbara and his daughter Catherine. A few weeks before Walter Murdoch died they brought him the news that Western Australia's second university would be named after him. It was a wonderful honour, the old man murmured, and characteristically then added: `But it had better be a good one'. Murdoch himself had little doubt about what it took to constitute a good university, and in the early years of this university's existence debate was frequent about the nature of the `Murdoch ethos'.